


Accepted?

by SegaBarrett



Category: Empire (TV 2015)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-04
Updated: 2016-01-04
Packaged: 2018-05-11 15:39:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5631937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Andre waits for the letter that will change his life. Or so he hopes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Accepted?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [margalo_streussal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/margalo_streussal/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I don't own Empire and I make no money from this.
> 
> A/N: First ever Empire fic! I hope it turned out okay.

Andre Lyon leans back and crosses one foot over the other as he taps his fingers over his knee. He’s not looking to be late today – it’s the most important day of his life. Then again, every day for the last three weeks has been the most important day, because he’s been waiting to hear back from Penn. He leans forward, 

He’d spent hours awake, writing out essays and personal statements and fighting with his father to remember to fill out the FAFSA. He’d threatened that ten year old Hakeem was going to wake up with “Kick Me” shaved into his hair if he messed with his mail again. He’d prayed and pleaded and gnashed his teeth and needed this for far too long to give up now.

But he might not get in. That’s a possibility, of course, always a possibility. Things don’t get handed to people like him, never had. He still remembers the way some of his teachers would purse their lips when he’d talk about going to college, as if they were seconds away from telling him to just give it all up.

But why should he give it up? He’s done the work. His blood, sweat and tears has gone into his schoolwork, his applications… and he’d even found time to join a club. Chess Club.

He leans back in his seat. He’s riding the “el”, one of Philadelphia’s two subway lines, though the stop Andre is readying himself to depart at is one of the “elevated” ones. 52nd Street, then he’ll walk a block back and from there it’s straight to his mailbox.

That is, if nothing happens to get in his way. Given that it’s the el, he’s already half-convinced that something will get in the way, even before it does.

“It” comes in the form of an older, white man in a parka and in a wheelchair, who is having a loud argument with a middle-aged black woman who is wearing a long, cherry-red coat. Apparently one has caused the other some sort of offense, though who was initially in the wrong is hard to determine. 

“You stuck your ass in my face!”

“I didn’t stick anything in your face, old man!”

“You’re saying I imagined it? I’ll pull myself out of this chair and kick your ass!”

“I’d like to see you try!”

As the door opens at 46th Street, the argument has moved over to the door, and the man had half-wheeled himself on to the platform, but is staying half-on to continue arguing with the woman.

“Please stand clear of doors,” the recorded voice of the el tells everyone.

Andre always feels like the voice is bored. It wants to get out of here just as much as any of its riders did.

“Please stand clear of doors.”

Finally, the man wheels himself on to the platform. The door snapped shut before the woman can follow him out, and Andre breathes a sigh of relief.

Soon, he tells himself, he won’t have to ride the el anymore. His father’s company has been climbing steadily, getting traction, and his father had promised him the world if he stuck with him on this. He had stuck by him, even when it had been nearly impossible. That winter they had gone without heat when he was twelve? He had been the one to compile every blanket in the house to make sure Jamal and Hakeem were safe. He’d always put himself last.

This time… this time it has to go a different way.

“52nd Street.”

He nearly trips on the platform as he runs off the train, through the exit and down the stairs. He has to get there… 

He turns worst-case scenarios over in his head. What if his father gets there first, opens a rejection letter and holds it over Andre’s head for the next year, until he ends up at Community College of Philadelphia or maybe Temple.

“You shouldn’t have aimed so high,” his father would say with a smirk, even though he is risking everything on another dream.

Andre grits his teeth. Picturing it in his head, he almost wants to hit something.

He turns the corner. When he hits the steps he bounds up them in one stride, yanks open the mailbox and pulls out a bent up white envelope with the return address seal of the University of Pennsylvania.

He rips it open and finds himself staring at a letter telling him that he, Mr. Andre Lyon, is proudly admitted to the Class of 2009. 

He holds it up to his chest and finds himself staring around, wanting to jump up and down, to fist-bump… somebody.

The only thing that feels sour in his tongue is when he realizes that he doesn’t know who he actually wants to tell.


End file.
